When Prosecution Is Persecution: The Gun-Control Zealots’ War on Law Abiding Gun Owners

Good and evil. Right and wrong.Those are two fundamental opposing concepts that define the nature of humankind.

But for the gun-ban crowd, each and every one of them—when it comes to private ownership of firearms and armed self-defense, the very heart of the Second Amendment—there is no such conflict. In their lexicon, firearms in the hands of private citizens are inherently evil.

These zealots for disarming individual Americans choose not to recognize the basic notion that defines American freedom: the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun.

There is no better example of that mindset than with the persecution of a young woman named Shaneen Allen. Her crime? Being honest in New Jersey.

Allen, a Philadelphia resident, mistakenly believed her Pennsylvania carry permit was like her driver’s license—universally recognized across state lines. When she crossed the bridge into New Jersey in October 2013, she entered a gun-ban Twilight Zone that began with a state trooper pulling her over for a minor traffic infraction.

Allen acted properly when she volunteered that she possessed a lawful carry permit and had a Bersa semi-auto in her purse in the back seat. The handgun, by the way, was locked and inoperable. (In New Jersey, Right-to-Carry permits are rarely issued, subject to the whim of gun-ban public officials.)